Understand
by Nanaga
Summary: Early morning reflections frustrate Vivi—no one understands.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own Hana to Akuma.

**Flowers go to: **Light in the Void for beta-ing and listening to weeks worth of ramble ^^;

**Spoilers/Warnings: **Includes stuff from the whole series up to ch42.

**About this fic (1):** After reading vol 6 and really feeling poor Vivi's pain, as well as several other fics in this 'character study'-type style I wanted to have a go at writing one myself. The timeline is (as usual) totally mangled, I think xD; But, if you presume that at the end of this current manga arc Vivi finds out that Lucifer didn't quite tell the truth, then this fic takes place sometime after that…Vivi's just lying in bed, just having woken up one morning mulling everything over.

I also think that this fic sounds very mushy...but he says almost all these things in the actual manga! Vivi-sama, such a romantic underneath that cold hard exterior LOL!

Anyway, onto the fic for now~!

* * *

**Understand**

—x—X—x—

"_If you keep that brat, she'll only become your weakness!"_

Klaus didn't understand. But then, Vivi didn't really expect that he would. The one step back of his two steps forward, Klaus had never been the brightest of their little bunch. It was this long-ingrained hierarchy of intelligence, perhaps, that allowed Vivi to all-too-happily declare in the way that did—one part smugness, two parts exaggeration; all mixed together with barefaced honesty—that Klaus was once again wrong.

Hana was not his weakness.

She made him invincible.

—x—X—x—

"_I pray the day will come when you'll part with Hana-san."_

Moritz didn't understand. He still thought things like old rivalries and the candidacy to the throne interested him. Where had he been for the past two hundred years? It made Vivi doubt whether being called a Great Demon meant anything at all these days. But still—those sorts of comments could easily be conquered with sarcasm and disdain. It was Moritz's final statement that struck him.

How could Moritz wish for them to part, when every day he wished twice as hard that there was some miraculous way they could be together? His stomach churned violently at the mere thought of his desperate hopes being nullified by the simpering Duke's selfish prayers; he wanted to scream like a child at the injustice of it all.

Knowing she really_ didn't_ love anyone else more than him was a small compensation.

—x—X—x—

"_Whether we want it to or not, that day will definitely come! The day when Hana-chan will fall in love with some man…"_

Felten didn't understand. Or maybe he did, and that's why he put on the whining and the waterworks—to get under his skin. And—though he would only admit this to himself begrudgingly, and never out loud—it was working. The demon who claimed to be his best friend could also be his worst enemy at times, for it was very little that could sting Vivi more than the image of Hana bringing home a human man, or worse, leaving with him when the day was done.

Vivi didn't want Hana to live with _some other_ man.

He didn't want Hana to fall in love with _some other_ man.

He wanted that man to be him.

—x—X—x—

"_Vivi-sama! __Hana-sama might be in love with someone!"_

"_The boy closest to Hana-sama right now would be…Momo Tanizaki-sama!"_

Toni didn't understand. How he couldn't, Vivi couldn't fathom: the butler had served him since they were both ten years old—an acquaintance of close to two hundred years. He'd been with him since they'd first found Hana. He'd seen everything, from the times when he couldn't bring himself to lay even a finger on the girl to the times when he somehow couldn't _stop_ touching her, and yet somehow his guess still landed on that brat.

Momo Tanizaki.

A frown would always be deep-set into the demon's face before the last syllable of the boy's name could even be uttered. Vivi was a highly-ranked demon. He could sprout wings and conjure fire. And yet that tiny little florist could do things that he could not.

He was human.

He could touch flowers.

But they were not acceptable excuses to steal fleeting touches; they were not suitable reasons to steal her time from him; and, he hoped with every inch of his non-human, flower-killing body, not reasons to steal her heart.

—x—X—x—

"'_You two are destined to part soon.' That's all I told her."_

That old geezer sure as hell didn't understand. He didn't understand how wrong he was. The fact that he messed with Hana by pushing that lack of understanding onto her made his blood boil; the fact that he lied to him made Vivi want to finish off the ailing King himself. He might have once refuted that he didn't believe in destiny, except he kind of did now, because he didn't know what else could have brought Hana to his doorstep that snowy day. So, all he could do was tell himself how wrong Lucifer was.

Lucifer had lived for hundreds and thousands of years, ruled the entire Demon World and still he could not comprehend what 'one little human girl' meant to him;

That he had met with wall after wall of boredom until she had come and knocked them down;

That she actually made him smile;

That he would never leave her to go back to the Demon World;

That he wanted to be with her forever;

That his life was meaningless without her;

That he lo—

—x—X—x—

_Tap tap tap_

The sound of energetic, echoing footsteps suddenly reached Vivi's ears from far down the hall. There was no questioning who they belonged to.

Snapping out of his frustrated daze, the demon quickly pushed the covers away, slid into a pair of pants and slung a shirt loosely across his shoulders, racing towards the bedroom door. With a sharp tug the door was thrown open; Vivi came face to face with Hana.

The human girl let out a squeak of surprise. Her left hand was raised, ready to push open the door—never to knock—and in her right hand she gripped a picture-perfect pink rose. "Vivi!" she exclaimed, mouth and eyes wide in surprise. "You startled me!"

The demon said nothing in response. For several long moments his intense gaze burned her skin, concentration never faltering despite the fact that she was now extending the flower towards him. Seemingly ignoring it, he reached out tenderly to touch her hair.

What was meant to be a light-hearted caress, however, suddenly became his hands tangling themselves in her long, golden brown locks. Before he knew it his fingers were tightly woven through the strands and he was pulling her to him almost desperately; closer and closer; their all-but-joined mouths must have been drawing the same breath, and—

"Vivi!" Hana's gasp of surprise shattered his trance and he pulled instantly back, her hair sliding through his quickly retracted hands like tendrils.

"Ah…" If he was trying to produce words, he knew he was failing. Hana seemed equally incapable of speaking further, if her gaping mouth and rapidly reddening cheeks were any indication.

When her face had exceeded the colour of the deepest red roses they grew in the greenhouse and seemed to be radiating heat, she finally cried, "Here!" and flung the flower at him; he caught it by reflex, sending it to its doom. The demon paid no attention to the crumbling petals however, obsessively fixed on the slight figure now bolting down the hall. When she had rounded the corner he hastily slammed the bedroom door shut, sending the flower dust scattering across the floor, and slowly slumped against the hard wood, exhaling a long, pent-up breath as he did so. Placing a hand to his chest only alerted him to the rapidly beating heart caged inside.

What had he been thinking?!

He only ever acted like that when Hana drank the potion.

She hadn't drunk any potion.

_Oh boy… _ He raked a hand nervously through ebony bangs.

There were some things even the Great Demon Vivi-sama didn't understand.

—x—X—x—

* * *

**About this fic (2):** I actually went through many versions of this fic before settling on this one, and had been working on it for a while before finally reading chapter 42 and having some quotes from that tie it up nicely (in my mind, lol). It changed as my opinions on Hana and Vivi have (just a bit) as the actual manga goes along. Hana _is_ growing up, and their relationship seems to be progressing a lot lately, and since I never really believed that it would be just like, wake-up-one-day-and-it-turns-out-Hana-had-a-growth-spurt-overnight-and-they're-suddenly-in-love, at the moment I kinda like the idea of Vivi falling in love with Hana slowly, and doing unconscious things like this every now and then…until they get more and more frequent and then don't really stop :P haha.

Hope you enjoyed :) Thank you for reading!


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